Papercut traditional-style flash design of a compass, roses, dice, a butterfly and a banner reading Not all who wander are lost, shown as white cut paper on grey card.

Compass, roses and dice flash design

Traditional · Black and grey · Flash

A white papercut of a traditional-style flash design with a central compass rose inside a dotted ring, surrounded by roses, a peony, a sailor-style star, dice and a butterfly. A ribbon banner across the lower middle carries the words Not all who wander are lost. The linework is crisp and even, with the negative space of the grey card showing through, and the composition fills the sheet edge to edge.

Traditional Botanical Compass Rose Peony Dice Butterfly Banner Star Leaves Flower Lettering

Find an artist for this

Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow had been coming down since Tuesday when Ada Kell took the brass compass from its nail by the back door and buttoned her father's coat over her nightdress. Her brother Tom had gone up to the high pasture at dawn for the ewes and had not come down. Her mother kept the lamp burning in the kitchen window, but the lane and the walls had gone under white, and so had the stars.

Keep reading

The compass had been her grandmother's, bought off a Hull sailor for two dozen eggs. Its rim was ringed with raised brass dots that the old woman used to run her thumb over while she talked. North is the one thing that never wanders, she used to say, so whatever does wander is only lost to itself. Ada walked with the needle in her palm and the wind at her back, following the dry-stone wall by touch.

She found Tom in the lee of the old fold, sitting against a stone with his hands in his armpits and a pair of dice in his coat that he had won off the lambing hands at Michaelmas. He laughed when he saw her, a thin laugh, and said he had only meant to rest a minute. Ada did not scold. She showed him the needle, then the wall running down to the lamp, and told him that a body can wander a long way so long as it keeps one fixed point in its hand.

They came down slowly, Tom leaning on her shoulder, the wall under their fingers the whole way. Their mother was in the doorway with the bread knife still in her hand, as if she had forgotten what it was for. That night Ada hung the compass back on its nail. Tom kept the dice, and in the morning he rolled them across the kitchen table, three sixes, and declared the year would be lucky. Nobody argued with him.